Star Chamber Brotherhood (37 page)
Read Star Chamber Brotherhood Online
Authors: Preston Fleming
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Suspense, #Thrillers
“Do you have a particular brand in mind?”
The visitor shook his head.
“What brand do you drink, bartender?”
“Me, I drink the bar whiskey and save the good stuff for the customers,” Werner answered.
“Then bar whiskey it is. Make it a double, straight up. And pour one for yourself. We’ll drink to Kamas. May we never hear that name again. And we’ll hoist another to your team. Fine men, all of them.”
Werner pulled a bottle with a torn label from under the bar and filled two shot glasses to the rim. Each man let the whiskey glide down his throat until his glass was empty.
“I understand you’re leaving soon,” Lewis remarked upon setting his glass on the bar and letting out a contented sigh. “Your timing is good. Your work is finished here, Frank. It’s time to move on.”
The comment struck Werner as odd, particularly since he had told no one of his plans, but he let it pass.
“Another round?” he asked the visitor.
“Sure, if you’re having one.”
Werner crouched low to reach for another bottle under the counter but when he rose, Dave Lewis had disappeared.
****
Frank Werner noticed the flames on Harvard Street even before his train reached the Coolidge Corner Station. The moment the sliding doors opened, he tucked his duffel under his arm like a football and set off at a run toward Carol Dodge’s apartment building.
Police cars and fire trucks already blocked the street and firemen scurried to roll out their hoses and connect them to the nearest fire hydrants. Tall yellow flames reached out from most first- and second-floor windows and dense clouds of smoke billowed from the roof and windows of the topmost floors. It appeared to Werner that the building was lost before the battle had even begun.
Werner elbowed his way through the crowd to the sector of the police cordon nearest the building and stared in awe at the inferno. He thanked God that he had urged Carol and Linda to leave that afternoon, but prayed all the same that neither of them had returned to retrieve more valuables. To lose all her worldly possessions would deal Carol a heavy blow, but it seemed to Werner that such an event might be what was required to send her life in a new and more positive direction. Perhaps Concord could offer her that.
No sooner had Werner completed this thought than he saw a woman wriggle free from the straps holding her to a stretcher lined up near a waiting ambulance. The woman wore jeans and an oversized white t-shirt darkened by soot and smoke. She rose and staggered toward the nearest fireman, seizing his arm as if to drag him toward the burning building.
“You’ve got to save them!” she screamed. “There are people inside! Come, I’ll take you there! Please, come quickly!”
But the fireman was of a different mind. He encircled her petite figure with his arms and gently pushed her back toward the ambulance, where emergency workers rushed forward to retrieve her. In the glare from the portable light stands surrounding the fire trucks Werner had a clear view of her face and realized that the woman was Harriet Waterman.
At that moment conflicting thoughts flashed before Werner’s mind. Foremost was the fear that Harriet Waterman might be right and that Carol and Linda could still be trapped in the building. In an instant Werner reversed course and bulldozed his way back through the crowd. He ran to the first shop he could find that was still open, a twenty-four-hour pharmacy.
Werner set his duffel on the floor, pulled a ten-dollar banknote from his wallet and asked if he might make a local phone call. The turbaned pharmacist stroked his graying beard and accepted the money with an unctuous smile before withdrawing a phone from under the counter.
Werner dialed Linda Holt’s number and heard her groggy voice answer on the fifth ring.
“Hello,” she responded sleepily. “Who is this?”
“Yes!” he mouthed silently while holding his left hand tightly across the mouthpiece.
A moment later Carol Dodge joined the call on an extension.
“Hello?” she answered in an annoyed voice that was music to Werner’s ears.
But Werner said nothing. When the pharmacist gave him a puzzled look and opened his mouth to speak Werner raised a hand to silence him.
“Carol?” Linda asked. “Did you pick up, too?”
“Yes,” Carol responded. “But I don’t hear anyone on the line. Must be a wrong number.”
That was all Werner needed to hear. He pressed the button to end the call.
Both women were now accounted for while he was precisely the opposite. Aside from the women’s safety, Werner could scarcely believe the miraculous piece of luck that had just fallen into his lap.
“Please accept this gift from me, my friend,” he told the pharmacist, holding out another ten New Dollars. “All I ask is that you forget you ever saw me. Will you do that, my friend?”
“For a valued customer like you, Sir, most definitely,” the Indian answered in a singsong voice.
Werner handed him the banknote, returned the phone, and walked out the door onto the darkened street.
****
Two hours later Werner glanced at his watch, which read ten minutes before 3:00 a.m. He finished the dregs of his third cup of coffee and left the all-night diner on Beacon Street where he had sat with his duffel since leaving the pharmacy shortly after one in the morning.
The night air felt refreshingly cool on his face as he continued west on Beacon for three more blocks, then withdrew into the shadows at the edge of a parking lot. There he waited until an eighteen-wheeled tractor-trailer slowed down and turned on its high beams as if its driver were trying to read a street sign.
Werner stepped quickly to the curb and waved at the driver: a sturdily built black man in his late forties with a neatly trimmed beard. The driver lowered his beams and opened the cab’s passenger door. Werner climbed in and strapped on his seatbelt.
“Ready for a road trip?” the driver asked with a welcoming smile.
“Never been more ready in my life, Jonah,” Werner answered as he settled back into his seat. “But there’s been a slight change in plan. Tell me, how far south are you going on this run?”
“This one’s to Orlando,” Jonah Tucker replied.
“Then I’m with you, Jonah. All the way.”
“No stop in New Jersey?”
“Nope. Going to the end of the line. And then some.”
“That’ll be just fine by me,” Tucker said. “But I thought you were headed back to Utah. To settle down, I mean. When we first met on the way out here, that’s all you ever wanted to talk about. That and your daughter, anyway. What happened? Change of heart?”
“Yep. Change of heart, all right,” Werner replied with a boyish grin. “I’ve decided to go deep sea fishing.”
“Fishing!” Tucker exclaimed. “I’ve never heard you talk about no damned fishing! What do you know about deep sea fishing, anyway?”
“Nothing at all, Jonah. But I know a man with a fishing boat who’s going to take me out with him. And I have a really good feeling about what I’m going to find out there.”
And as if to reassure himself, Werner zipped open his duffel one more time and unclasped the manila envelope inside. There he found four bundles of banknotes, a letter from his daughter Marie, a card in Hector Alvarez’s handwriting with the name and address of a charter boat operator in South Florida and a U.S. passport in the name of Harvey Konig showing a photograph of Frank Werner.
THE END
Author Biographical Note
I wrote
Dynamite Fishermen
and
Bride of a Bygone War
to clear my head after eleven years of government service in places like Beirut, Cairo, Tunis, Jeddah, and Amman. I had already decided to write novels at age fourteen, during my first year as a boarding student at Exeter. My English instructor, a World War II combat veteran, advised those of us who wanted to follow the path of Melville, Conrad and Hemingway to first go out and live some adventures so that we would have stories that people might want to read. My adventures started in the Middle East and continued in Washington, Europe, the Russian Far East, Maui, Utah, New York and Boston. Particularly in the Middle East and Russia, I saw failed states and failed societies but was often surprised at how much their people had in common with Americans. This made me think about whether America might someday suffer its own breed of failure. During the 1930’s, Americans watched Germany, Italy and Russia and asked, “Could it happen here?” Today, one might look around and ask the same. In writing
Forty Days at Kamas
and
Star Chamber Brotherhood
, my greatest concern has been that the novels gain a readership before the events they describe come to pass.
A Final Word
: When you turn the page, Kindle’s “Before You Go” feature will give you the opportunity to rate this book and share your rating and comments on Facebook and Twitter. If you enjoyed the book, please take a moment to let your friends know about it. Better yet, post a Reader Review on Amazon.com, Goodreads.com or LibraryThing.com. If the book gives others a few evenings of enjoyment, they’ll be grateful that you reached out to them. And so will I.
With best wishes, Preston Fleming
Other Books by Preston Fleming
Classic Espionage. “Civil disorder in 1980s Beirut. An extraordinary novel, each page as eruptive as the city providing the setting.” KIRKUS REVIEWS
Realist Spy Thriller. “CIA agent in Beirut fears his past has caught up to him. An intelligent thriller teeming with vigor. KIRKUS REVIEWS
Dystopian Political Thriller. “Moves at a solid clip. An overtly political story that succeeds as entertainment.” PACIFIC BOOK REVIEW
Dystopian Assassination Thriller. “An engaging fast-paced thriller. Readers will spend pleasant hours rooting for a team of assassins.” BOOKPLEASURES.COM
Dystopian Thriller. “Pure energy in print form, whether the characters are being pursued or simply talking.”
KIRKUS REVIEWS
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